You Can See the End of the World From Here
by schizometriclanguage
Summary: Dr. Crane wakes up on a prairie. Scarecrow would agree and say it was not one of their most ideal days.


When he opened his eyes, it was clear that he noticed immediately how dry they felt. He blinked several times, taking care of regular functions like vision before something like realizing just where they were. Passing his tongue over his lips, Jonathan found that they were also deficient of moisture, and cracked. _Whenever he does get around to talking,_ thought Scarecrow, _they'll probably crack open again and bleed._ It was dehydration, but he wasn't certain of why just yet. Scarecrow watched patiently, letting his cohort gain his composure.

Opening his eyes wide hurt (duh) and Jonathan's whole body cringed inwards with pain. It didn't do much in the ways of usefulness.

Scarecrow crooned with a rasp that gravelled his throat, _Wake-y, wake-y, eggs'n'bac-y._

Jonathan ignored the poorly constructed rhyme Scarecrow had picked up from _Kill Bill_ and fingered at his eyes. How long had his contacts been in? Long enough to hurt like hell when he took them out, the curling call of relief snaked from his throat. Asides from drying his eyes out to further emphasize the general parch-dry state of his body, you weren't even supposed to sleep with them in, and Jonathan had to chase one of the lenses around to simply get it into position to take out. The call of relief turned to a genuine call of pain, embellished with several strange nuances Scarecrow hadn't heard in a while as they seemed to tear out his eyes. Removed from his eyes, they stuck to his finger tips, the dry skin and eye fluid working as an adhesive. Angrily, Jonathan flicked them away, into dry dirt, and patted around his pockets for his glasses. Finding them, he shoved them onto his head and Scarecrow watched the man's slim frame tremor with a blood-curdling yell no one would hear should he allow it to escape. For now though, it stayed in, and Jonathan's hands shook violently with his pent-up rage. And rightfully so. He'd buggered up right and proper. That's what happened when you sold fear-toxin for your little experiments to the general degenerate public instead of the drugs that the mob bosses thought that you were selling them; in this case, namely some kick-ass hallucinogens fore _recreation,_ not cardiac arrest and urine stains from being piss scared.

"Where are we?" Jonathan asked, his voice pressurized and escape in short steams of air. _Like a steam engine,_ Scarecrow mused, ignoring the question. Like he knew. Maybe if he didn't answer long enough, he'd get to see Jonathan lose it, which was really a gem, since he hadn't ever actually seen it happen. Instead, his voice got all thin and punctuated, like it was now, though right now, it was also raspy. Like the Bat Man's. Only, coming from Jonathan, it didn't do much for intimidation. Not a criticism, seeing as it wouldn't be very intimidating from himself either, but at least if _he_ were the one who's voice sounded like that, it'd at least be less whiny. A whiny growl. What an oxymoron. Emphasis on moron. Scarecrow reached out and ruffled Jonathan's hair, which was already sticking at all the bizarre angles and matted with dust and a bit of blood. Scarecrow inspected for injury but found nothing life threatening

"Where are we?" Jonathan asked again, smoothing out the front of his suit in a desperate bid for dignity. But there was no auction for such a quality out here in the middle of nowhere. And it really was the middle of nowhere. For as far as he could see, Scarecrow only saw prairie. Not even _desert,_ as one might expect when waking up feeling as dried out as beef jerky, but prairie, where at any moment the deer and the antelope would play-_ee._ Someone had dumped them in a _prairie._ Admittedly, this was a nice twist on the usual and whomever had put them there got points for that.

"Where are we!" Jonathan spat out. Scarecrow sighed. It wasn't quite the all out yelling, stomping-slipping-and-sending-your-foot-flying-out-in-front-of-you-losing-you-balance-and-falling-on-your-ass freak out he'd been hoping for, but given the circumstance, maybe he should just take what was given before Jonathan decided to commit hari-kari with the pen that was bleeding ink through the fabric of his pocket.

_It's seem that we in a prairie, dearie,_ Scarecrow drawled. Did they drawl like that in prairies? They must in some prairies, he decided. Jonathan shot a withering look. Scarecrow smiled back benignly, and offered a hand to help Jonathan up off the ground. Not that the view was much better when one was standing, but Jonathan would probably like to walk off a bit of that numbness from lying on his leg like that for the last ten-odd hours or whatever it'd been. Scarecrow checked if he still had his watch on, but no luck. But they'd been taken here around ten at night from wherever it was that'd _he'd_ woken up after they'd landed wherever it was that they'd landed, and the sun had come up not to long ago, so the math suggested that it was around ten hours, which hopefully, hadn't been spent in transporting them to the _middle of nowhere._ As much as he was serious about nothing, he did care about his and Jonathan's survival, and if they were a ten hour drive out from somewhere, it'd be better to just start digging a pair of graves and have one of them doing the courtesy to go first and cover the other up. It'd been a lovely sunrise.

Now standing, Jonathan took his turn at burning hate into their somewhat alarming predicament.

"What do they think this is, Russia?" he muttered vehemently. At least the boy was keeping his sense of humour.

_So what's the plan?_ Scarecrow asked. It was best to let Jonathan take the lead in the more intelligence demanding situations, not because he was smarter than Scarecrow, but rather because his sense of arrogance shadowed over the both of them. Not letting him have his way when it came to matters of the mind, only meant unnecessary quarrelling and a twin set of migraines. Never fun. Besides, where Jonathan was intelligent and driven, Scarecrow was rather content to sit back and be intelligent and lazy. His witty banter, razor sharp, was laced with a mutual sarcasm and it was enough so that Jonathan wouldn't ever hate him for being a imbecile, but his languid approach to topic of gray matter invigoration into the formulation of plans of sorts was what really kept them together. Scarecrow was someone to stroke his ego, asides from his other duties. Besides, Scarecrow figured, he could faucet all his docility into his subverting of _plans,_ and _schemes,_ and worst of all, _researching,_ to Jonathan, and just let his own activity flow outwards in places where Jonathan would be quite useless. A good, healthy, symbiotic relationship. Can't have too many chefs in the kitchen after all.

Right now, however, it was looking like there was nothing either of them could do to get them the hell out of this place.

Jonathan didn't answer and was pacing over the dry earth, examining the ground as though it'd bear the fruits of revelation. _Has he gone 'round the bend finally?_ thought Scarecrow, not without a hint of hope. Scarecrow followed behind for lack of anything better to occupy his time with. The heat was beating down on the back of his neck, and he was suddenly reminded of the very susceptible skin complexion both he and Jonathan shared and sighed, tugging at his jacket.

_Jonathan,_ he addressed. For all his intelligence, Jonathan seemed to ignore common sense. He had it, Scarecrow was sure that he did, but he simply ignored it. There were more important things than, oh, survival. He did this often, easily susceptible to whatever brilliant new formula he was working on, or too enthralled with his /_patients._/ Seeing Scarecrow's improvised head cover, Jonathan nodded and followed suit, wrapping the sleeves of the blue jacked with it's tiny brass looking pinstripes around his neck and tying it behind. Scarecrow was glad that there were no mirrors, sensing that he'd feel most undignified with their current garb. Jonathan went back to scouring the dry earth, impatiently brushing aside shrubbery here and there in case that it was covering what he was looking for. Whatever he was looking for. Scarecrow stopped following him, and watched him, arms crossed over his chest. Jonathan got out about ten metres of him and then beckoned him over. Curious, Scarecrow obediently went to his side.

"We go this way," Jonathan said, indicating to the ground with a pointed finger and then tracing outwards. Faint tire treads.

_Well, that's lucky,_ Scarecrow commented. Jonathan shot him a look.

"If we were 'lucky', this wouldn't have happened at all."

Scarecrow shrugged. It seemed redundant to say that since neither of them believed in luck all the blame could be traced to Jonathan and his little social experiment that'd damaged the mob's pockets and irrevocably destroyed a section of their clientele. With the sun relentlessly baking him into the land, Scarecrow thought for a moment how he almost-very-nearly wished that they hadn't broken out of Arkham for a bit longer as a way to lay low from the Mob's strange and cruel Stalin-esque retribution with an indie underground film variation. After the whole Joker charade, they were out for blood and it just happened that Jonathan was an easy target. Scarecrow grinned. They'll probably regret doing this. Really, after seeing the effects of that mild little dosage Jonathan had given the junkies, surely they didn't think that they were immune by trade to exposure to the toxins.

_Shall we?_ Scarecrow asked, offering an arm as one would offer an arm to one of Bruce Wayne's charity benefits. Jonathan ignored him, brushing past him and wiping at a bleeding lip with his white sleeve, leaving a streak across the fabric. Scarecrow heaved a dusty sigh and followed after him. If they managed to get to some dingy roadside diner by the end of the day without suffering anything like severe dehydration or heat stroke leading to a most guaranteed painful demise, this all wouldn't be so bad. At least dingy roadside diners had the promise of apple pie, or whatever it was these maybe drawling sort of people considered to be patriotic cuisine.

He whistled 'Home on the Range' for a while, and half expected some cowboy sort to just ride up on his noble steed, or maybe a scene from _Blazing Saddles_ to play out in front of them. But it was just expansive flat lands and a few rodent holes that were tricky if you were already stumbling along from exhaustion. In the end, before finding a dingy dinner, they found that they'd simply ended up in a cow field. Somehow, even with all that blank canvas earth making obvious embellishments such as cow patties easily discernable, Jonathan managed to take a sliding step onto one and landed flat on his back with spine-tingling satisfactory release of stock profanity.

Scarecrow let out a sigh of pleasure. Even if he didn't get any fruit filled pastries today, it wouldn't be so bad.

_Why Jonathan, what a foul mouth you have,_ Scarecrow chided with admiration, reaching down to hoist Jonathan back up on his feet. Jonathan scowled but in spite of himself, accepted the hand of assistance.

_There we go,_ Scarecrow chimed cheerfully and brushed off Jonathan's shoulders. He made no move to brush off his pant leg however, as it had a prominent streak of stench now. _That's not so bad, is it?_

Scarecrow smiled serenely back at Jonathan's best _'fuck-you'_ face.

_You know that I love you no matter how you look at me._

Jonathan scoffed and began trudging towards the ranch-style home on the other end of the field. Woe be to whomever lived there, friend or foe, Jonathan was in a most contemptible mood.


End file.
